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They are well acquainted with the planets, 

 which they call GaUj a word derived from the 

 verb gaun, to wash^ from whence it may be in 

 ferredj that they have respecting these bodies the 

 same opinion as the Romans, th^t at their setting 

 they submerge themselves in the sea. Nor are 

 there wanting Fontenelles among them, who 

 believe that many of those globes are so many 

 other earthsj inhabited in the same manner as 

 ours ; for this reason they call the sky Guenu- 

 mapu, the country of heaven ; and the jnoon 

 Cuyen-rhapu, the country of the moon. Thej- 

 agree likewise with the Aristotelians, in main- 

 taining that the comets, called by them Chcruvoe, 

 proceed from terrestrial exhalations, inflamed in 

 the upper regions of the air ; but they are not 

 considered as the precursors of evil and disaster, 

 as they have been esteemed by almost all the 

 nations of the earth. An Eclipse of the sun is 

 called by them Laj/antu, and that of the moon 

 Laycujcii, that is, the death of the sun or of the 

 moon. But these expressions are merely meta- 

 phorical, as are the correspondent ones in Latin, 

 of defectus soils, aut lunoe. I know not their 

 opinions of the cause of these phenomena ; but 

 1 have been informed that they etince no greater 

 alarm upon these occasions than at the most 

 common operations of nature. Their language 

 contains several words wholly applicable to astro- 

 nomical subjects^ such as Thoren, the late rising 



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